This past Wednesday, I had what would be considered a mental crack. Not a complete breakdown, but I had broken down throughout the day. Waking up on my day off, I had experienced a series of fluxes in my emotions that all lead up to me feeling empty and overflowing with tears. You may be wondering why or even when did I figure out that I was mentally cracking. Through the tears and anguish, I had begun to search out, to figuring out the reasons why. Why was I so damn sad when everything around me has been going well? Why was I feeling so empty that mustering the feeling of being "full" was a difficult task, especially in the things that had been going very well for me?

Warning: this is going to be a movie review, but it is also going to be a wide ranging therapy session for the critic writing this. Strap in.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Birds made their rounds around the clock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. You awaken from a brief sleep. The clock shows 3:15 AM. You hear HE yelling, obscenities again. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. It’s way too early for this, HE must have stayed awake through the night again. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. You can hear HER running up the stairs, her muffled pleads overshadowed by HE’s fit of rage. You hear the faint sound of glass breaking, the sound becoming more clearer with every step you take towards your bedroom door. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Your grandfather’s clock seems to stop in the moment of time. You wish it all would stop. You wish your dad was still here. Your real dad. The dad you’ve never known, he died protecting the country… a single gunshot wound to the heart, the obituary read. So senseless, and short, that damn obituary. All he did for our country, and all the favors he did for people he thought were his friends, no one even bothered to show up. No one, except my mother and I. Holding HER hand, I did not yet understand that when I lost him, I lost HER too. Now he’s buried in a vat of dirt in the ground. I was three when it happened. I recollect a man in a bright blue suit, knocking on the door and giving HER a letter. I remember her tearing the crease, to a single piece of parchment paper reading over it with her trembling fingers, and then falling to the ground. I remember HER being hysterical. HER was pregnant with my baby sisters at the time, as she rolled on the floor, a carticuare of her own body. I could not help but giggle, for I could not understand what was happening. It was then that my mother shooed the men out the door and then ran up our spiral staircase and locked herself in her room. I could remember it was days of isolation for I fed myself with what was in the pantry, and when I had eaten the last piece of bread, I walked towards the nearest house I could find with my stuffed bear in hand, knocked on the door and asked if I could have something to eat. I remember the sound of flashing lights, the blue and red sirens seemed like they were dancing in my eyes. The men in suits came and took her from me. I was just five years old. Just a few years ago, when I was old enough to understand, I learned that she had tried to kill herself the first night she was stolen from me.

As a child growing up, I knew I as different from everyone else. The sights and smells of certain foods made me ill, and I had a finicky appetite. If I smelled something that disagreed with me it would feel as if my breath were being cut off. At other times I would be eating, and it would feel as if I was unable to swallow. I broke out in cold sweats and was very nervous in crowds.

So, I recently discovered something that could potentially work incredibly well, providing it gets the attention it deserves. I saw an article online, which went into detail about the new Hidden Disability Sunflower Lanyard Scheme.

If you're anything like me, you've heard "you've got such an old soul" since you were old enough to hold a conversation.

Being in any type of relationship with an alcoholic or an addict is just hard for everyone involved. You want and try so hard to save this person from their self-destructive ways.

So you find yourself in a blended family with stepchildren, some who are grown up. By no fault of your own, one of the stepchildren happens to become a drug addict. You and your partner are non-drug users, not alcoholics and never have been. You are both "Normies" (normal people who do not alter their state of being by getting high or drunk all the time, preferring to mentally keep it normal).